TSH thread

[Anonymous No.17644217]

Just finished this, and I don’t know why but I’m addicted. It’s as if Donna Tartte put a group of /lit/ psueds in a class together, the characters are absolute dumbasses about the real world. For some reason it’s far less emotional than I would have expected based on the premise, it’s actually rather bleak. General discussion, feed me your thoughts.
tldr; Bunny did literally nothing wrong

[Anonymous No.17644258]

>>17644217
Pop-fiction masquerading as literary fiction.

[Anonymous No.17644310]

>>17644258
I agree with this this, that’s most of Tartte’s work but regardless it leaves me to enjoy the idea of what could have been than the execution. For example, if it had been Edmund’s ghost who met Richard at the end, had been Edmund that took Richard in from dying of pneumonia and therefore revealing to him how broke he was that way instead of hearing about it, and Edmund’s repressed sexuality had been more touched on it would have had a lot more value at a tragedy. Instead it came off as a pseudo tragedy and more of a pulp.

[Anonymous No.17644331]

>>17644258
Apt description for my diary desu.

[Anonymous No.17644356]

>>17644310
>Edmund that took Richard in from dying of pneumonia and therefore revealing to him how broke he was that way instead of hearing about it
why would he have done that? bunny was a massive prick and ashamed of being skint, this would totally go against his character

[Anonymous No.17644382]

>>17644217
>>17644258
Yeah the eternal truth of The Secret History is that it's not great literature but it's just so fun, Tartt hasn't topped it since.

The themes of thee book are basically all about LARPing. Richard LARPS as rich, the Classics clique LARPs as 1920s Ivy League/Oxbridge students even though they're in 1980s Vermont, they LARP as snooty WASPs even though they're all Catholic, including Bunny (Corcoran is an Irish name), they LARP as ancient Greek Dionysians, Henry's attempt to LARP as a master poisoner fails, etc. It's all a big LARP.

[Anonymous No.17644383]

>>17644356
I don’t think it would go against his characterization at all actually. He used all his friends but he still genuinely loved them, that’s why he was so insecure about not being invited to the Bacchanalia. Plus he got pretty buddy buddy there with Rich for a moment, they’re similar in that they both cared more about how taking Greek made them look smart instead of actually caring about the subject, they both didn’t fit into the clique as well and they were both broke posers. They just dealt with it differently.

[Anonymous No.17644391]

>>17644382
Don’t forget professor Jillian, king of LARP republic

[Anonymous No.17644397]

>>17644258
Jesuit psy-op masquerading as pop-fiction

[Anonymous No.17644425]

>be Cloke
>Henry asks for light poisoning for his bacchanalia
>”sure man got just the thing”
>sell him datura
>ruin pier’s lives
based cloke was the real villain

[Anonymous No.17644440]

the book isn't very good and it's just so popular because some people have a huge crush on Tartt.

[Iserlohn Republic No.17644446]

>>17644217
It's a fun book, but I have no idea why so many girls are infatuated with it. The irony flies right over their heads I guess.

[Anonymous No.17644481]

>>17644446
Well it was written by a woman
>The irony flies right over their heads I guess
I disagree with this, women have a far better understanding of this book than men in my experience. Men unironically thing we’re supposed to sympathize with the class for constantly making the wrong decisions. They miss the reversal, or anything paralleling Greek tragedy. Maybe you should study the Greeks more and have sex.

[Anonymous No.17644572]

Still baffles me no one seems to get that Henry was the antagonist? Dude was straight the villain yet every time I see this book discussed anons want to be him.

[Anonymous No.17644815]

>>17644440
i really like her body of work

[Anonymous No.17644838]

>>17644572
anons also want to be the joker so you know

[Anonymous No.17645129]

>>17644572
I'm currently 300 pages into the book and it's pretty clear at this point that he's a total psycho and responsible for guiding the group, who are utterly dependent on him, deeper and deeper into the abyss.

[Anonymous No.17645136]

>>17644217
It's pretty much liberal arts college in book form.
t. graduated from a liberal arts college

[Anonymous No.17645145]

>>17644838
I'm laughing because it's so horribly true

[Anonymous No.17645166]

>>17644440
>some people have a huge crush on Tartt.
I like Donna Tartt because she doesn't post every single thought that comes into her head on Twitter, doesn't give many interviews, doesn't constantly try to keep herself in the spotlight, and rarely says anything about her personal life. She's one of the few successful current authors that's still somewhat mysterious. Funnily enough, this actually makes her more interesting.

[Anonymous No.17645172]

>>17644572
Well it's apparent that he is the cause of everything wrong in the group. However, he is the only real intellectual of the story, even more so than Julian. His suicide is not only the most powerful scene of the book, it's also the proof that he is the only one to take their immersion in the ancient world seriously. Taking all of this into consideration, I think that he is liked because he is the only one who's credible in their endeavour. Also, there's the edgelord factor.

[Anonymous No.17645302]

>>17645166
Even among her classmates at Bennington she was something of a mystery.

>JONATHAN LETHEM, FROM “ZELIG OF NOTORIETY”: With [Donna], as with others...I passed through a dazzlingly quick intimacy, to violent disagreement, then silence. What compels me now is that in each of these cases the friend was another like myself, a financial--aid case there, stranded among the heirs to various American fortunes....In friendship Donna had a rarefied talent for secrecy and fantasy, exactly as her books suggest… I relished sharing [her] trancelike aura until the star of our friendship suddenly fell.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a27434009/bennington-college-oral-history-bret-easton-ellis/

The actual people the characters in The Secret History were based on do not sound like they were overly pleased by the book. As >>17645136 said, though, it is very true to the liberal arts college experience. I knew who acted very much like the main characters, especially Bunny.

[Anonymous No.17645319]

>>17645302
>especially Bunny
do they wanna fuck? I give quality head.

[Anonymous No.17645328]

>>17644258
I agree that it's pop-fiction. I don't see how it is masquerading as literary fiction, though. Has Tartt made any statements that she sees it as a work of full-on literary merit?

Obviously there are *readers* that like to think of themselves as literary readers because they read TSH (or Goldfinch or whatever), but I don't know that I've seen the books themselves marketed that way, or Tartt ever classify herself as a literary author.

[Anonymous No.17645335]

>>17644481
>Maybe you should study the Greeks more and have sex.

In this context, surprisingly good bait.

[Anonymous No.17645761]

>>17644217
Was the book trying to say that being a pagan makes you into killers? I know the author is a catholic.

[Anonymous No.17645781]

>>17644217
You can tell Donna Tartt is a sick fuck by some of her interviews. I heard one where the interviewer would make the lightest, most innocuous remarks about the characters being immoral for killing Bunny and she would rush to deny it without saying why.

[Anonymous No.17645845]

>>17645761
I don't think she is making a moral statement on paganism. She was trying to draw a comparison between the dullness of modern life and the richness/zeal with which the ancients presumably lived.

[Anonymous No.17645915]

>>17645845
She was definitely trying to make a moral statement. Since I’m an atheist I didn’t catch it at first, it’s only later when I thought about it more that I realised the author was trying to make statement on religion and morality.

[Anonymous No.17645945]

>>17645302
Unrelated, but I had classes with J Lethem. Weird guy but friendly enough. Later, I learned he had some kind of pseudosexual rapey relationship with a student who he subsequently wrote into his next novel as a whore that the MC falls in love with

[Anonymous No.17645991]

>>17645328
bruv she won the pulitzer

[Anonymous No.17646000]

>>17645991
And Dielan won the nobel

[Anonymous No.17646006]

>>17646000
So?

[Anonymous No.17646020]

>>17646006
Let me spell it out for you:
literary
awards
mean
nothing

[Anonymous No.17646105]

>>17646020
you're an idiot

[Anonymous No.17646117]

>>17645781
So she thinks Bunny did nothing wrong? She's a Catholic herself though.

[Anonymous No.17646311]

>>17645781
I don’t know why anyone would defend what they did to bun. He was a sexist homophobic ass but he didn’t actually warrant the murder or expect it from his friends. Imagine being Bunny getting pushed by Henry in that moment. Happening to come across all your friends at night maybe they’ll invite you to whatever they’re doing for once. Instead the friend you love most walks up to you mid-friendly conversation and pushes you off a ravine. Everything was for nothing.
>>17646117
No, she defends Bunny’s murder every chance she gets. It’s not that Bunny didn’t do anything wrong but she defends the others having done anything wrong by murdering him.

[Anonymous No.17646374]

anons do me a favor and keep this thread bumped until I can get back to it tomorrow thx luvs

[Anonymous No.17646386]

>>17646374
You got it, anon.

[Anonymous No.17646422]

>>17646374
I will be awaiting your comeback eagerly.

[Anonymous No.17646991]

OFFICIAL DONNA TARTT BOOK POWER RANKINGS:
1. The Secret History
2. The Little Friend (I don't know why nobody talks about this one)
3. The Goldfinch

[Anonymous No.17647057]

>>17646117
>She's a Catholic herself though.
Had Donna Tartt converted to Catholicism before The Secret History was published?

[Anonymous No.17647205]

>>17646991
>I don't know why nobody talks about this one
Because they've never read it.

[Anonymous No.17647278]

>>17644217
So which dumbass did you see yourself as?

[Anonymous No.17647331]

>>17646311
For self-perservation. He simply could not keep quiet. It would have led to trouble sooner or later.

[Anonymous No.17648427]

>>17645991
kek, she's nowhere near Dickens or whoever else people keep comparing her to. The Goldfinch was alright, but certainly not deserving of a Pulitzer.

[Anonymous No.17648485]

It was a fun read. I put it into my pulp shelf on goodreads but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable for what it is. I will admit I was pretty shocked when they got to the incest bit

[Anonymous No.17649938]

>>17646386
>>17646422
thank you :3

[Anonymous No.17649979]

I want Donna Tartt to give me an oily handjob.

[Anonymous No.17650547]

For those who don’t want to pay but want in the discussion, there is an abridged auto book version here on YouTube that is well preformed

https://youtu.be/ZvOmU5evsAk

>>17648485
Saw it coming from a mile away. Mentally disturbed women writers love to spice their work with incest, especially the twin kind

[Anonymous No.17650583]

>>17644217
Is it worth it? I tried reading the Goldfinch a while ago and it was just boring and depressing so I never finished it.

[Anonymous No.17650595]

>>17650583
It's comfy, I will give it that. And it is much better than Goldfinch. It is not, however, great litearture.

It's like taking the first half of Brideshead Revisited and filling it with New England preppie pseuds, and then grafting on a murder mysteryesque plot.

[Anonymous No.17650628]

>>17650595
Thanks, I'll give it a go. Tartte is pretty shilled by wannabe academics and that's why I gave in but it won't hurt to try again.

[Anonymous No.17650945]

>>17647278
OP here, if you’re asking me directly in all honesty it would be Bunny. I’ve hung around rich white kids like that before and their ignorance on the rest of the world allowed them to be assholes. Honestly a group of privileged kids in a pretentious studies program premeditating murdering one of their friends in order to avoid a conviction of an accidental murder is more realistic than you’d think. Like bunny I have actually come from a bit of a wealthier family then lost it all, during that I became humbled unlike bunny but I still would have no qualms in mooching off well off people. If you make those types look bad they will socially reject you, if you look at what happened to Bun as metaphorical it makes perfect sense in conjunction to the real world. The others did not care about Bunny’s bigotry except when it directly effected them, other than that they enabled it so they most likely carried the same views. They just weren’t vocal. That’s the truth of elitist types is most carry on pyramid mentality because that’s what keeps them privileged. When Bunny was gone, that openly vocal view of their ugliness was also erased so their secretive ugliness fell apart without that shield of Bunny to hide behind. They all fell apart, we saw just how much of pseudo-intellectuals these kids were as their true degenerate behaviors were. The bacchanalia, without Bunny being an open drunk partier they partied in secret and accidentally killed someone because of it. The alcoholism of Charles, it was already a problem it just got worse after Bunny was gone. Cam’s dishonest personality around other people. Henry being an absolute villain. All that was exposed without Bunny because he represented an honesty, and when they tried to repress it, it shot back on them ten fold. Now I don’t sympathize with Bunny for being an ass but I do see myself as brutally honest and willing to mooch off rich people so I think he is the most like me of all the characters. I’ve also been socially castrated for foiling pretension in friend groups before too so there’s that.
I almost forgot, not to mention he was the only one who wanted to do the right thing about the farmer. Originally he was only being an insecure baby about not being invited to his friends’ party but when he uncovered the full truth he had a break down under the pressure of being lied to, whether any of his friends were real, that he should turn them in as it was the right thing to do. The only person who came close to being a normal sane body about the murders was Francis and that was only “um maybe we shouldn’t kill our friend teehee” then went back to complying.

[Anonymous No.17651006]

>>17650547
I was really hoping it wouldn't pan out when they were dropping the hints but alas I was wrong.

[Anonymous No.17651250]

>>17651006
In incest between siblings there’s always a power dynamic. It was clear that Charles had influence over Camellia before everything and was molding her into his “perfect twin”. I’m sure they had slept together throughout the book. Incest relationships like that are based on abuse and don’t last.

[Anonymous No.17651772]

>>17645915
Beauty cannot exist without Truth.

[Anonymous No.17651892]

>>17644258

I don't see how you could even mistake it for highbrow after a few pages.

But literary fiction these days is literally housewife tier trivialities, so I wouldn't class today's literary fiction as high brow

[Anonymous No.17653183]

Adding to this >>17650945 Bunny was distraught over what happened. He confided in Richard while drunk hoping to take some ease away from it. He turned to means of coping, such as the shopiholicalism, alcohol, find food and clothes ect it was all a form of coping. What he needed was comfort, real friends but the one he finally though he could trust was in on it against him only because he found out a day or so before. Richard was a fucking chud who would have an entirely different take on the situation had Bunny told him about the situation at first, not Henry. We would have seen Bun in a much more sympathetic light if Tartt didn’t want to coddle the other characters so much. So while Bunny is considered a bigoted jerk who deserved what happened to him by most readers, the rest are seen as “tragic” for constantly making selfish bad decisions. Richard was an NPC surrounded by narcissistic pretentious psueds, bunny was the only character with his own personality and formed his own decisions/judgements outside of Henry and that’s why he needed to go.

[Anonymous No.17653727]

I wanna fuck Edmund Corcoran’s lifeless dead body in the snow

[Anonymous No.17654149]

>>17646991
I haven’t actually read the other two I think worth it? synopsis?

[Anonymous No.17654533]

>>17648427
I do feel like they just gave her the Pulitzer for The Goldfinch because they missed the chance to give it to her for TSH

[Anonymous No.17654559]

>>17651892
I agree. It is a page turner but it's pretty shallow overall. I think the ornate prose and rich people characters make people think that the whole book is deep. The prose is good, but not incredible, and when you look for deeper meanings in the book beyond intrigue there aren't any. Still a hell of a book imo, but probably not highbrow.